Compass: Your Roadmap to Business Reinvention

When transforming your business model, lots of roadblocks spring up along the journey. One that nearly always happens is the business identity crisis: Who am I and What is This Business?

It feels as if you’re starting out all over again with really basic questions. Shoot! Again? Didn’t you do this at the very beginning of your business?

Sometimes it feels like you’re sliding backwards toward square one. Don’t worry, you’re not.

I know it’s frustrating. Truly – it’s necessary, too. Here’s a great opportunity during your business reinvention process to pause and re-examine the Big Questions:

1. What do you want from your business: emotionally, financially, intellectually?
2. What personal values does your business reflect? And if your values have changed, what has to change in your new business model to reflect those new values?
3. What brand does your business currently have and do you need to re-brand it?
4. If you re-brand it, what image/message do you now want to project for your new biz model?
5. And the biggest question of all: WHY am I in this business?

Business reinvention is not just about making decisions and implementing plans. It’s about asking questions and getting clarity.

Do you have services or products that you love, but your customers are unwilling to pay for? Are some of your offerings no longer profitable but you find yourself resistant to removing them from your website?

In business we call these “sacred cows,” the untouchables that are exempt from questioning. Often you are emotionally attached to them because you developed them yourself, spending huge amounts of time and money to bring them to the light.

Sacred cows don’t only include unprofitable or unwanted products and services. Sometimes you have a vendor or contractor who needs to be released because their quality has slipped.  Sometimes you need to look at tasks and processes that are ineffective time-wasters.

Don’t hold on to sacred cows: they’ll suck your business dry. During your business reinvention, look at all aspects of your business and cut things that no longer serve your customers or the goals of your business.

Transforming your business means looking at all aspects of it, even those pieces you think are sacrosanct, like your target audience. I know you spent a lot of time defining your perfect customer and even more time building relationships with the customers you have.

Here are some “what if” questions to ponder that might open your eyes to new ideas:

• WHAT IF you could serve the people who also serve your customers? For instance, I’m a small business coach. What if I could serve the financial advisors, accountants, virtual assistants, human resource and training companies who serve my customers?
• WHAT IF you could serve a different target audience? Let’s just pretend for a moment that you didn’t want to offer one-on-one private services anymore, but you didn’t want to throw away all that knowledge and experience either. Could you create a training program to teach people how to become what you are? Then they could serve your original target audience.
• WHAT IF you could narrow your target audience to one from a specific demographic? For instance, let’s say you are a graphic artist and you’ve been working with local companies to design their marketing materials. What if you focused solely on service firms, or solely on manufacturing firms? What if you focused only on businesses which make more than $1 million a year? Or focused only on women-owned businesses? Or focused solely on businesses with a strong socially-responsible stand?
• WHAT IF you could ponder all the past customers you’ve had and choose the ones that you most enjoyed working with? What do they have in common?

You don’t have to make a major shift to a brand new target audience, though that is one viable business reinvention strategy. You can re-define who you most enjoy working with and which clients are the most profitable, transforming your business to align more with your goals and values.